What type of skirting board would go where?

A family member got me thinking the other night. He was looking through our website, interested to see what products we had and what may suit him when he asked; 'your product descriptions are good, but what kind of house would you most expect to find each type of skirting board on your website in? Plus, if I was on a serious budget why would I buy your American Glacial Oak skirting board instead of MDF skirting board?'

Fascinating question I thought. Being a lover of all thing wooden this got me thinking; can you put a few different types of skirting into the same genre and make them work in a certain age/type of house?

I pondered this for several minutes and in the end decided, yes, I think you can.

Take torus and ogee for example. If you have a house built in the 90's with white plastic windows and white 4 panel internal doors they will probably have white painted torus skirting board. To make a house like this seem far more current, classy, and expensive, the easy way to achieve this is to fit veneered oak internal doors and solid oak skirting boards and architraves in either ogee or torus. However, if you have young children playing with toys, or a heavy vacuum cleaner, 1 slight knock will remove the veneer from the skirting board and leave you with exposed MDF, instead of an attractive piece of oak.

Barns benefit from being kept simple. Bullnosed, slight chamfers or chamfered-v skirting boards and architrave are the best fit here. If you are on a small, medium or large budget these skirting boards will work for you.

Internal doors on barns are usually vertically tongue and groove boarded, made out of solid timber, and therefore the type of timber can have a massive impact on budget due to how much wood is in each door. So in barns you can save money by having pine doors and simple pine skirting and architrave if you wish. You can upgrade to Ash or, if your budget allows, go the whole hog with Prime European Oak. Our key advice here is to always keep it simple on a barn and most importantly stain your timber. Never paint doors, skirting, or architrave in a barn so it keeps its character.

Old houses with high ceilings will always need character from their skirting boards and architrave to fill the high walls. The best option for the best look will be our manor house range, you may even want higher than the 170mm and, if you do, just drop us a line via the contact us form and we can provide you with a quote.

I have MDF skirting in my kitchen diner and bathrooms so the MDF over timber question was a good one. Having spent the last 5 years mopping once a week my MDF skirting is showing signs of swelling and frayed edges at the bottom, so I would have been better using timber skirting as it looks like I may have to replace it in the next year or so.

Ultimately, the choice is yours. Being the 4th generation of a family business I have a clear passion for quality wood products and that's why we're here. I hope this post has provided a little objectivity and you've found it useful.

There's one last piece of advice I'd like to pass on. Please stain your wood. No matter what timber you use take advantage of its natural beauty, you won't regret it.